The Study of Indigenous Pyrodiversity Management Practices in Central California: An Eco-Archaeological Approach

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，一个跨学科的学者团队正在研究加州印第安人采用景观管理实践的程度，特别是规定焚烧，以提高当地经济植物和动物的生产力和多样性。在全新世晚期和历史时期，加州狩猎采集者群体对当地环境的管理程度，在本土学者、生态学家、民族学家和考古学家之间存在着相当大的争论。虽然有些人主张在北美土著其他地方发现的农业社会的规模上战略性地使用火和景观改造，但其他人认为，在最近的文献中，管理实践的规模和复杂性被大大夸大了。这场争论不仅仅是一场学术活动。加州目前正经历着一场毁灭性的火灾（2008年发生了4000多起野火），对财产损失、土地使用问题和国家预算造成了严重影响。在正在进行的辩论中，一个日益被提出的问题是，土著景观实践的一些元素是否可以应用于加利福尼亚荒地的管理，以增加本地物种的生物多样性，减少燃料负荷和破坏性火灾风暴的频率。这项研究的目的是双重的。首先是开发一种综合生态考古方法，研究加州印第安人的景观管理实践，特别关注规定的焚烧。这种方法将采用来自现场和非现场环境的各种类型的生态和考古数据。将采用严格的方法收集微植物遗骸（花粉、木炭、淀粉粒、植物岩）、宏观植物样本、动物材料、人工制品和红木树桩的楔形样本，这些样本可用于构建火灾历史和植被演替，并评估当地狩猎采集者社区可能与火灾管理有关的文化习俗。该方法还包括综合利用历史景观数据（照片、地图、连续航空图像）、民族历史资料以及现存的土著口述历史和口述传统。第二个目标是将这种方法应用于Quiroste山谷，这是位于加利福尼亚州中部Año Nuevo州立保护区的新指定的“国家文化保护区”。这项工作将由一个由来自加州公园和娱乐部（DPR）、Amah Mutsun Ohlone部落、加州大学伯克利分校、加州大学圣克鲁斯分校和旧金山河口研究所（SFEI）的土著学者、考古学家、范围管理研究人员和火灾生态学家组成的合作研究小组进行。研究小组将评估一个热多样性收集器模型，该模型假设狩猎采集者通过煽动以频繁，小，低严重程度的表面烧伤为特征的火灾制度来增强和创造生物多样性。在评估该模型时，团队成员将解决有关全新世晚期和历史时期Quiroste山谷火灾管理实践的性质、范围和影响的研究问题，以及特定类型的实践是否可能减少主要火灾风暴的频率和严重程度。这项研究的知识价值在于更好地利用考古数据来评估有关过去火灾制度的问题，并确定狩猎-采集社区在多大程度上创造了人为环境。这项研究的更广泛影响包括考古学家和生态学家可以对当代荒地和荒地-城市界面开放空间的研究和管理做出重要贡献。在Año Nuevo国家保护区工作时，项目研究人员不仅可以调查过去的土著消防实践，还可以与DPR资源专家和Amah Mutsun部落成员合作，利用从生态考古研究中获得的经验，开发管理当代景观的替代方法和观点。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).With support from the National Science Foundation, an inter-disciplinary team of scholars is examining the degree to which California Indians employed landscape management practices, particularly prescribed burning, to increase the productivity and diversity of economic plants and animals in local regions. There is considerable debate among Native scholars, ecologists, ethnographers, and archaeologists about the extent to which California hunter-gatherer groups managed local environments in the Late Holocene and Historic periods. While some argue for the strategic use of fire and landscape modifications on the scale of agrarian societies found elsewhere in indigenous North America, others believe the magnitude and complexity of management practices have been greatly over-exaggerated in the recent literature. This controversy is much more than an academic exercise. California is currently experiencing a devastating fire situation (more than 4000 wildfires in 2008), with grave implications for property loss, land use issues, and the state's budget. A question that is increasingly raised in the on-going debate is whether some elements of indigenous landscape practices might be applied to the management of wildlands in California to increase the biodiversity of native species and to decrease fuel loads and the frequency of devastating firestorms. The purposes of this study are twofold. The first is to develop an integrated eco-archaeological approach for the study of California Indian landscape management practices through time, with particular focus on prescribed burning. This approach will employ various types of ecological and archaeological data from both on-site and off-site contexts. A rigorous methodology will be implemented to collect microbotanical remains (pollen, charcoal, starch grains, phytoliths), macrobotanical samples, faunal materials, artifacts, and wedge samples from redwood stumps that can be used to construct fire histories and vegetation successions, and to evaluate cultural practices among local hunter-gatherer communities that might be associated with fire management. The approach also includes the integrated use of historic landscape data (photographs, maps, sequential aerial imagery), ethnohistorical sources, and extant Native oral histories and oral traditions. The second goal is to apply this approach in the Quiroste Valley, a newly designated "State Cultural Preserve" in the Año Nuevo State Reserve in Central California. The work will be undertaken by a collaborative research team comprised of Native scholars, archaeologists, range management researchers, and fire ecologists from the California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), the Amah Mutsun Ohlone Tribe, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI). The research team will evaluate a pyrodiversity collector model which hypothesizes that hunter-gatherers enhanced and created biodiversity by instigating fire regimes characterized by frequent, small, low severity surface burns. In evaluating this model, team members will address research questions concerning the nature, extent, and implications of fire management practices in the Quiroste Valley during Late Holocene and Historic times, and whether specific kinds of practices may have curtailed the frequency and severity of major firestorms. The intellectual merits of this study are to make better use of archaeological data in evaluating questions concerning past fire regimes and to determine the degree to which hunter-gatherer communities created anthropogenic environments. The broader impacts of the study involve the important contributions that archaeologists and ecologists can make to the study and management of contemporary wildlands and open spaces in the wildland-urban interface. In working at Año Nuevo State Reserve, project researchers are ideally situated to not only investigate past Native fire practices, but to collaborate with DPR resource specialists and Amah Mutsun tribal members in developing alternative methods and perspectives for managing contemporary landscapes using lessons derived from the eco-archaeological research.